I travel by car a fair amount on my own dime enjoying mobile ham radio and visiting family. I look first for Holiday Inn Express because they tend to be a good value for money, newer properties, day-of cancellations allowed*, and free breakfast helps too. So I picked a hotel chain not a hotel progra...

I am a few days from age 60, retired a little over a year, and am currently 50:50. I was on a 2-percentage-point glide to 50:50 since my mid-40s, and intend to be on a 1-percentage-point glide until 20:80 at age 90. (Not that I expect to even come close to 90yo.) I guess I'm now on a 110-minus-age g...

TurboTax Deluxe, purchased and downloaded from Amazon. I've been using TurboTax since back in the DOS days, except one year when they were particularly scummy with anti-piracy technology (by writing to the boot sector, for you fellow geeks). Still disappointed that Vanguard doesn't provide it for fr...

FWIW, here's what I did. I make no claims that it's smart or good for you. Years before retirement, after a lot of reading and thinking, I became a lot more comfortable with deciding to retire a little early by breaking it up into two periods: the "forever" period after claiming SS at 70, and the bo...

Retired at 58 because I could when I ran the numbers, that was 2.5 years ago.....work is sooooo over rated...lol Do not know how I would fit work into the schedule! Me too, except started 1 year ago. One thing I was well aware of before retiring was that the happiest retirees consistently have a pa...

Thank you thread ... I had fallen asleep on monitoring Prime MM, would not have noticed for a while that it beats Ally online savings (where I am now). Moving back into Prime MM will make cash management easier especially as we transition from working to retirement (from saving to distribution).

Good timing. I retired almost a full year ago, and here's what I wrote at that time: >>>>> I've been a member of this forum for almost 10 years, and for several years before that at the precursor Morningstar group. A frequent reader but a rare poster, I've learned a lot from the group. More than any...

It was hot and hazy in Santee SC, and some clouds were rolling about, but we were lucky to see the entire eclipse ex. the last half hour of partial. It's about 10 hours drive here from home in Philly area. To reiterate what others wrote, there is no comparison to the thrilling magic of seeing totali...

Funny to see this thread this morning ... I have in front of me 4 just-found Powerball tickets from 2016, so they've expired. I am proud to have resisted the temptation to lookup the numbers. So, no, I absolutely will not be buying a ticket for Saturday.

Thanks for all your contributions here Larry, a have learned a lot from your articles and the discussions here on the board. Sorry you felt you had to leave. Hopefully others will at least post links to your future articles.

Yes, you could certainly do that - recharacterize the conversion and then recharacterize the TIRA contribution as a Roth regular contribution. You will end up as if you made a regular Roth contribution in the first place. Of course, it will involve some tax filing work with explanatory statements o...

Hello Bogleheads, long time since I asked a question in a new topic. I'm newly retired this year, thanks in part to the great advice I've read here. About 5 years ago, I converted everything in my TIRA to my Roth, and have been making max "backdoor Roth" contributions early each year since then (con...

<geek> In my transition from engineering to programming, my first big assignment was to augment a Fortran compiler to discover DO loops in source code that could be implemented as a single vector op codes, rather than a set of scalar op codes with test and branch op codes. That process was called "v...

Now that you are a civilian, what do you recommend for consumers' best practices for internet security regarding connecting to financial systems? Nothing you haven't heard before, this is just off the top of my head: Sign up for email or text message notification of transactions Check your account ...

I've been a member of this forum for almost 10 years, and for several years before that at the precursor Morningstar group. A frequent reader but a rare poster, I've learned a lot from the group. More than any one particular subject, this community has been most valuable to me to reinforce the gener...

I'm also surprised at the amount of negativity in many of the responses here. Obviously it all depends on your kids for what works and what doesn't, and a lot of that is just whether you're lucky to have kids with good dispositions. You won't really know for sure till you make the trip, and you'll p...

No, that's way way over my spend limit. Hamilton has gone into brag-to-your-friends territory; I'm sure there are people going who don't give a darn about seeing any Broadway musical and are just going for the "prestige". The biggest premium I've paid was about 60% over face, for the original cast o...

If you have---or you think that you have---enough (whatever that amount may be), how do you stay motivated to keep working? Or should you even keep working? I ask because I've recently been experiencing serious motivational problems. In short, as I see our net worth increase, my desire to get up in...

I searched the FAFSA form and there doesn't seem to be anything about a student being claimed or not claimed as a dependent. Everything is geared towards the student and the student's parents. I could have missed something, but I don't think so. FASFA indeed doesn't care what the dependent claiming...

Originally got the PlayStation 3 in 2007 because it was the best value Bluray disc player available at the time; the gaming console part was a "free" bonus. As the platform evolved, we use Netflix, Amazon, and VUDU streaming apps from the PS3, and their interfaces are fine as well as having good pic...

There is no lower priced decent hotel in Manhattan. Our family of 5 made a habit to stay in one of the suite hotel chains in the Harmon Meadow development near Secaucus NJ. There's a nice bus that loops around the area and drops off at the Port Authority Bus Terminal in midtown, a couple blocks from...

If I could get a loan and do a qualified 529 withdrawal in the same year and can get away with investing the loan money, say in a fixed instrument then that loan money will be accruing interest over time. It'll be like a 0% loan if the loan's interest does not begin accruing until after graduation ...

To get the 529 tax benefits, you can only offset 529 withdrawals with college expenses incurred in the same tax year as the withdrawal. Paying off a college loan in some other year cannot be used for a qualified 529 withdrawal. OTOH, loans don't "count" as an offset to college expenses for 529 purpo...

How often do you purchase I-Savings Bonds? Also, what is your primary use for them? I.e. - extended emergency fund, bond allocation, etc. Once a month at end of month, automatic $1500 via TD. Six months to my account, then six months to my wife's account. We put an extra $1000 each in on the month ...

We got CP2000 forms from the IRS twice in regard to 529 withdrawals. (CP2000 is a proposed change to taxes owed based on a discrepancy between what's reported on a taxpayer's return and what the IRS has on file.) When I surveyed online forums, it seems to be fairly common for 529 owners to be questi...

The bank made it be known that that the house was sold "as-is" and that it wouldn't make any concessions (monetarily or other wise) to anything found during the inspection. In my initial purchase agreement, my offer was contingent upon the house passing my inspection (with the full knowledge that a...

GnuCash is my backup plan. A few years ago when I was annoyed at Quicken, I tried to convert. After seeing that it wasn't trivial (the Quicken transactions imported fine but the GnuCash double-entry bookkeeping meant I had to think about adjustments and catch-all accounts), I went back to Quicken. B...

We did almost exactly that plan two years ago, with 2 old folks (me and DW) and 4 kids & young adults, only in reverse. Used a Globus Tours family package tour, so Globus did all the planning and driving. That way Dad got to enjoy himself and not have to be the bad guy forcing the family to stick to...

Oh great! I have 492 CDs ripped lossless in my Windows Media Center. Hope I can find a good replacement, as I use WMC to stream music around the casa. Consider converting to open codec FLAC that's not subject to the whims of Microsoft (or Apple). I use dbPowerAmp for conversions and ripping, but th...

My plan is to self-fund retirement until 70 (for about 10 years, starting 3 years from now) using a bond ladder purchased at retirement, and then take the SS benefit at 70 as well as annuitize a significant portion of my remaining nest egg. The estimated SS payment starting at 70 should be a comfort...